Hungarian particle verbs in a corpus-driven approach

Abstract

The meaning and the argument structure of particle verbs are determined by the combination of a verb and a particle. In Hungarian, verbal particles (preverbs) can occupy various positions in the sentence: they can be preverbal (detached from the verb), immediately preverbal or postverbal. The syntax of these particles is discussed in a wide range of theoretical literature. This paper presents a performance-based analysis, using corpus-driven method to reveal the distribution patterns of verbal particles in more than 21.5 million sentences. In order to obtain these data, it was needed to improve the POS-tagging of verbal particles and to develop a semi-automatic method to decide which verb the detached particle belongs to. The distribution patterns give better insight into the phonological and pragmatic factors that may determine the position of verbal particles.